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My buddy Andy Osenga posted this on his blog, and it was too amazing not to share.

It’s a band called “Sonseed” performing “Jesus is My Friend”

Jesus is my friend by “Sonseed” from Peleg Top on Vimeo.

Tags: Sonseed

You can say a lot about Derek Webb, but once thing you can’t say is that he isn’t on the leading edge of ingenuity in the music biz.

He gave away his record, Mockingbird, for free before Radiohead did the same, and it was a huge success for him, putting his music into the hands of over 80,000 listeners.

With The Ringing Bell, he had a graphic novel put together to be sold alongside the book for a few extra bucks. Another great idea.

Most recently it’s been his new project, NoiseTrade, that has raised the creative bar. It’s a super-slick site where listeners can pay what they want for any record, or download it in exchange for a few email addresses.

Today I caught wind that Derek’s better half, Sandra McCracken, has a new CD available for pre-order. The disc, entitled Red Balloon, is available for purchase for $7.99.

If you’d like a little more than just the disc, you can get the Bonus package for $21.99 which includes the CD, a discrevolt card with acoustic versions of some of the songs as well as a 30-minute interview of Derek and Sandra talking about the songs. You also get a Red Balloon t-shirt.

Want another option? Yeah, some of you do. For the $54.99 DELUXE Package you not only get everything mentioned in the BONUS package (CD, bonus songs, bonus interview, tshirt), you also get a limited edition “moleskine” journal with Sandra’s handwritten lyrics to all of the songs from Red Balloon. Pretty cool, eh? BUT here’s the catch. There’s only 25 of these DELUXE packages available. And since 2 of my friends have already bought them, there’s no more than 23 left at this moment.

Honestly, it’s brilliant. How do you, as a musical artist, keep from getting stuck in the CD dead zone where everyone’s music is priced between $8 and $16 and no one is selling enough CDs? You give people options. In doing so, you make them powerful consumers.

You also give them limited edition items at a higher price point. Your die-hard fans will gladly pay more to identify themselves as belonging to the tribe of true fans, and you, as an artist, will make a few more bucks. Who’s losing in that scenario? (hint: no one)

Kudos to Derek and Sandra for not only being creative in their music, but in their marketing as well. (and for what it’s worth…the new songs that I heard Sandra play last month were amazing)

At this very moment I am enjoying the sweet sweet sounds of Derek Webb.

Last night Erica and I - along with our good friends Jake and Kim - trekked into Philly to see Chris Martin and his band of merry men otherwise known as Coldplay.

Before going to the venue, we headed into Philly to get some eats. A tip from the locals sent us to Paxia, a mexican BYOB place on the corner of 8th and Christian. (Jake and Kim were fascinated by the BYOB thing…as were some of my family when they visited from MA. is this a Pennsylvania thing? Restaurants that don’t have liquor licenses so they let you bring your own alcohol? I’m not sure)

Anyway, we didnt have any B to BYO, but we did get a few appetizers and entrees. The food was decent. Appetizers were better than the entrees. I’m telling you this in the blog, because I’m not the type of person to tell a waiter “Ehhh, it was just ok”. Jake on the other hand, is that type of person. He told our waiter “the chicken was dry”, which made us all uncomfortable. So we, in turn, gave Jake a hard time about it for the rest of the night, even though there’s nothing wrong with being honest with your waiter…or is there??

Anyway, onto the show, which was great. Here’s Erica and I in Section 109 of the Wachovia Center, waiting for the show to begin. (you can even click on these pictures to see them bigger, just in case you need a larger shot of me looking like a crazy-eyed madman)

If you must know, tickets were just over $100 each for our seats. Yeah, kinda steep i guess. Apparently if you wanted to purchase a men’s t-shirt it was $40. Women’s t-shirts were $35. Programs for the night were $20. Parking at the Wach was $12. Thinking pleasant thoughts about Coldplay set you back $10. They even charged you to say the name “Coldplay” - $1.99 for the first 5 mentions, 10 cents for each additional mention. Ridiculous.

What can i say about the show? Well, I loved it. The setlist included most of the songs I wanted to hear. (except I would have loved “talk” from X&Y). They played a bunch from their new album, which was a good thing. And they closed the show with “Lovers in Japan” and “Death and All his friends”, which are probably my two favorite songs on Viva La Vida, so i went home happy. (if you’re curious about the setlist, it was similar to this.)

Here’s our view of the stage. Apparently I shot this picture right as Chris Martin was performing cold fusion with uranium atoms.

All in all, great night. Really was. We even got out of the parking lot in under 5 minutes.

In fact, it would have been perfect if it wasn’t for that dry chicken. Oh well.